Needing to be brave in a new world by Ruth Neuwald Falcon

I had an appointment with a new primary care doctor this morning. A couple of my other medical providers had good things to say about him. “He’s quite warm and jolly,” they told me. “He’s a good guy.”

So I was fully prepared to like Dr X. He came in and shook my hand. Looked me in the eye. Good start. “Where you from?” he asked me. “Queens? The Bronx? Staten Island?” A bit of a slip here. No one from Manhattan likes to be taken for coming from an Outer Borough. But he’s from Long Island, so I let it pass.

But when he murmured something about “looking forward to RFK making big changes,” I flinched. Breathed. Waited. Circled back after he had listened to my heart and lungs and looked in my mouth and nose. “What did you mean about RFK?” I finally ventured. “He’s gong to clean up the food industry,” he said. “Go after those corporations that feed our kids PopTarts and all the other processed foods.” Right. This is the administration that is going to clean up corporatism. Strikes me as rather unlikely.

I was thrown enough that I didn’t ask Dr X’s thoughts on RFK’s position on vaccines, which I very much wish I had. When I left his office, I felt icky.

I’m not sure I can explain this clearly. I got through yesterday by paying very little attention to what was going on in Washington, D.C. In the morning, I watched Don Lemon (who, along with the Cuomo brothers, was instrumental in getting me through Covid) on his definitely not mainstream media show, which streams on YouTube and Facebook and maybe other places as well. He was in his kitchen making a full Southern breakfast for himself and his husband, thumbing his nose at the inauguration and refusing to be made miserable by it. Time enough for that.

At noon, I went out and scraped six inches of snow off my car.

I am aware that terrible things were said and done yesterday. But, heeding the counsel of so many in what is becoming the resistance, I did my best to find what joy I could. The snow blazed bright in the sun. I am a winter person so delight in the special beauty that bare trees and a frozen river bring. The various Substacks I read made me know I wasn’t alone and that there are millions more with whom I share common ground.

So what threw me today? The doctor’s overt espousing of RFK and his role in this new administration hit me hard. This is a different world we are in now. I don’t know the rules yet. I will need to tread somewhat carefully out there. I will speak my mind but I also know that the assumptions I have held for so long about the kind of country this is are very much not, as my mother would say, au courant.

I can’t quite put my finger on it. I just know that I feel unmoored and ungrounded in a whole new way. And I haven’t decided if I’ll go back to Dr X.